The need to create a new virtual machine arose recently. My new SSD once again proved it's value during this process. The OS I was installing (soon to be reviewed) required a bit more than the 10GB standard virtual disk so that I was compelled to make a 16GB platter instead. Creation of virtual disks can take quite a while depending on how you do it. Either dynamic allocation or a fixed size can be used and I've been inclined to go the longer fixed disk route. This time the VM on my SSD took only a few seconds to create. It's truly fascinating to say the least.

The new virtual machine was made so that I can evaluate something interesting that came to my attention lately:

I'm the last guy you want to talk to about what's going on in the Linux community, but I do run across some interesting tid bits of information on occasion. The people over at the Ubuntu project decided that they wanted to make a credible MS Windows competitor. They dipped into the Debian pool of distributions to came up with Ubuntu. It was pretty slick back in '08 but it wasn't exactly what they had in mind. So, the Ubuntu developers created something more consistent with their goals in what we have come to know as the Unity desktop. Unity obviously is targeted at mobile devices and there is a concerted effort as I write this to make it the OS of choice on mobile devices. Well, they have as much a chance at doing that as does Microsoft. Both groups went off on a tangent as far as I'm concerned.

But, Ubuntu has it's good points, even if Unity isn't one of them. I happen to like Unity but long time Linux users never did accept the concept and have been wailing and gnashing teeth ever since. One group of dissatisfied customers decided to address the discontent and create a retrograde desktop environment that looks and feels like the old Debian used to be. Well, why not? I see that somebody has also devised a desktop environment to emulate Windows XP, but that's not the subject here. Bringing back the old time religion is what Ubuntu MATE is all about.

This post is just to make you aware that salvation for Ubuntu might be at hand. I have less than 24 hours experience with it so that I can't give it a fair review. I can say that MATE takes the user so far back that it's uncomfortable for anyone like me who has taken a liking for the way Unity does things. In unity you open the launcher, type in what you want, and voila. You get a choice of all the installed packages that match your criteria. With MATE, you have those drop down menus shown in the picture, which is how life used to be back in 2008. I had to pull down quite a few menus and second guess how things were organized in order to find a simple text editor. That was way too much navigation for somebody (like me) who is used to having the system do all the searching for you.

The MATE desktop is highly customizable which is nothing new to Linux distributions. However quite a few themes come already packaged. There are oodles and oodles of GUI's to set every parameter you have ever thought of and quite a few you didn't know exist. Since MATE is built upon Ubuntu, all the Ubuntu system controls and package managers are available. Given that I'm using a virtual machine for this round of testing, I can't really say much about the drivers. I'm assuming that if it's available in Ubuntu, you can get at them from MATE as well.

All things considered, I am thinking that the traditionalists among us will eventually like MATE. At the moment it's not quite as stable as Ubuntu (so says the linked article), but it does have everything you learned to love and use from back in the good ol' days. If you try it out, feel free to say a few words here. If you already have Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, it couldn't be easier to install MATE. They have their own PPA repository that you just add to the existing Ubuntu standards.

Back when I tried Linux MINT, I installed Linux Mint Maya and Linux Mint Mate.Never could get Mint to run on my test computer so abandoned it.

WHAT desktop is in your Image Above? I see it has Top AND Bottom Panels, a MUST for me!

I also see GEDIT in the drop down menu, which is a GNOME editor.This desktop looks like the old GNOME2, and if it is, You may have me going back to Ubuntu...

I LOVED Ubuntu 8.04LTS, HATED with a Passion, every release since then. Which is why I tried Linux Mint, and ended up using Debian6, which was great. I'm am not at all happy with Debian7, although I've found workarounds for most of what I hate about it. At least it is stable.

As you know, anything and everything in Linux can be modified. I have tried using different desktop environments in my primary Ubuntu machine; KDE and something else from Gnome if I recall correctly. What you see in the screenshot is essentially a desktop called MATE. MATE is installed after you already have Ubuntu 14.04 LTS going. I'm not sure MATE works on any other platform just yet.

I can install a fairly decent Ubuntu in less than 4GB of disk space, but adding MATE brought the disk usage up to just under 8GB. That means MATE is a bit more than just a desktop environment. Some of the system settings actually call up familiar Ubuntu GUI's so that it's obvious the two work together.

This is the first release version of MATE and it is mostly bug free. I have found a couple glitches, but they could be due to the fact that I'm running it in a virtual machine. Ubuntu has an applet that lists all the system components and I'm able to tell what version Gnome is installed there. But, I've not been able to determine what MATE is using. The idea behind the MATE project was to go back to the well regarded Gnome environment inside a modern Linux distribution. I think these guys have pretty much accomplished their objective, but it's obvious some work remains to be done. The more people that use MATE the better it will get. Hopefully you will have an opportunity to install it and let us know what your impressions are.

I know Mint or Ubuntu won't run on my old testing computer, and right now I'm working with bailing wire and bubble gum since the lightning strike. So I had better play it safe until I rebuild one of the computers.I will give it a go though, because I'm not to happy with Gnome3 or Debian7.

What kills me, if my laser printer worked perfectly, never a glitch in Debian6. Why does it have so many problems with Debian7? Can't print from Gedit at all, you just get pages of garbage.So they changed something major under the hood, that messes up everything.

I can only blame myself for not installing Debian7 on it's own partition, and keeping Debian6 until I learned the mess Debian7 has caused.

I think Ubuntu has done more for keeping things humming right than any of the other Distro's.I just don't have time to play around trying out stuff, working from 8 am until after 10 pm every day.If I can save up a few bucks, I can tell my computer maker what OS to install for me on a new machine. He's never charged me yet to install any Linux Distro, even though he himself don't like raw Debian, hi hi...

Since getting my new computer back, I've been using Ubuntu one day, Mint the next day, my old Debian the next, and trying different desktops with each.

I was having a cursor issue with Debian 7, which did not occur in either Ubuntu or Mint. But I had several other issues I spent many hours trying to resolve in Ubuntu. Didn't matter whether I was in Unity or Ubuntu Mate. I had no such problems in Debian or Linux Mint.

Many of the things I can do easily in Debian 7, drove me nuts trying to accomplish in Ubuntu or Mint. I'm on Linux Mint Mate right now, seems I may change from Debian to Mint Mate now that I got some of the quirks out of the way.

In Debian, to install the fonts you use to your Font's folder, you simply open Nautilus as Root and paste the fonts into the folder. You can also make a link under accessories to Super Nautilus or whatever you decide to name it, using the command gsku nautilus and you have write privileges because you are the root superuser.

You cannot do this in Ubuntu or Mint, because it flat out does not work. The program shows you are superuser, but you have no privileges so you cannot paste into the folder. OK, if Nautilus wouldn't work tried using Caja with the gksu caja in the applications folder, accessories slot. Still didn't work, even though it showed me as superuser.Even loaded a program called Font-Manager and ran it at superuser. Forget it, Ubuntu and Mint both don't like normal everyday simple operations by the root operator.

A few hours on-line searching and learned you can do it from command line, and for some reason Ubuntu and Mint don't like Nautilus. One of the problems with both Mint and Ubuntu is that it does not recognize a Superuser as Root. It uses the word Superuser to mean Administrative User, and if you do become Root, they use the same word superuser, which really confuses things even further. There is no way to log-in as root from any program, without calling it up from terminal as the true root user. Why they have convoluted a perfect system is beyond me.

Once I learned these quirks about both Ubuntu and Mint, I could finally start using them for my daily work.Things that did give me problems on the NEW computer in Debian, did not exist in either Ubuntu or Mint.But the opposite is true on my older used computers. There Debian shines, and Ubuntu or Mint fall short.

Mint has a lot of controls not available in Debian, which is why I'm leaning toward making Mint my default OS on the new computer. Learning new names for replacement programs will take a while to get used to. I've used gedit for so many years, trying to remember pluma will take a while, and caja in lieu of nautilus. As mentioned above, I did install nautilus, but it didn't help with the problem. I'm finding some things I use gedit for don't work the same in Mint as they did in Debian, but pluma works like gedit did.

I've also given Unity and Gnome 3 a fair trial period. Seems like it will be a LONG learning curve to even get used to trying to find things in Unity or Gnome 3, much less trying to get any work done. Neither have the features I need, nor can they be added to Unity or Gnome 3, they are just not part of the cellphone emulating desktop package deal.

I still have a few problems with displays in Ubuntu and Mint. When I try to bring them back up, the lower monitor does not come back on. In Mint I can go to control panel and click on Monitors and it comes on. In Ubuntu, I have to open the monitor adjustments and hit apply before the lower display comes back on.

So far though, I do like Mint on the new computer. It's just learning how to do things and what programs work and don't work that is so annoying. On-line searches rarely produce solutions, just other folks with the same or similar problem, and answers that have nothing at all to do with the problem at hand.

Someone asks about their cursor disappearing over a graphical image or button, and the person responding tells them to try using a different printer to see if the color will come back. Say what? Then you get the 99 other posts about their OS is better because it works on RaspberryPI, hi hi...

I'm not schmartz enough to know how to do some of things I like about Debian on Mint yet. But I see others are doing just that with ease somehow, based on their screenshots I see online.

Mint seems to have newer drivers in their repositories than Debian, which helps also when you have a new computer. Which seems odd, since most of their repositories are Ubuntu repositories, but Ubuntu didn't have the right ones.

Thank you for sharing your experiences. Your latest story depicts everything that I think is wrong with Linux from the get-go. It truly is versatile and highly customizable, but you need a graduate degree in computer science to take advantage of all that flexibility. Like yourself, I've become very disenchanted with the support for Ubuntu. SUSE support is worse and I rarely go looking for help from the debian community. The bottom line is that there is no reliable resource you can go to for solutions to highly technical problems. Perhaps, as is the case with Microsoft, you can buy Linux support somewhere but that kind of defeats the philosophy behind FOSS.

Ubuntu does not have a root account per se. You can acquire root privileges with the sudo command, but su simply is not part of the OS. They claim doing it the way they do is for security reasons. If you can't easily acquire root status, a hacker is going to have even more problems. I have learned that just about anything can be done using sudu and the terminal. But, some simple things like installing my video drivers need to be recompiled with each kernel upgrade and done from the Linux shell. Talk about crazy :!:

I have limited experience with Mint and that was in openSUSE. I was running a Chrome OS emulator that way, but they stopped supporting it. So now I have abandoned that project. But, I did try to understand and add enhancements to Mint. I'm not sure if it was Mint itself or something in the Chrome OS emulation that was messing up, but I could not add any extensions to the taskbar for love or for money. It looked pretty, but then so does MATE.

They added something new to Linux a few kernel revisions ago so you no longer have to recompile the kernel to add a new driver. I don't remember what it is called, but within the kernel is a handle that points to a driver file, and cobs the ones you installed later from there.I don't know if it works with drivers for everything, but it did for my second monitor and printer.

To use Sudo, you had to add yourself to the Sudoers file, which was a pain to remember each time.Trying to remember when to use Su, Sudo, or Sudo Su drove me nuts. So I've always had a Root Terminal in my Applications/Accessories list. So I'm only a click away from being Root. Also, so I don't forget I have to use Caja and not Nautilus, which I installed myself. I removed Nautilus, since it didn't work anyhow. To save from having to type Caja in the Root Terminal Window, I added a Superuser Link to Caja, so it too is only one click away. It opens Terminal and then Caja, all in one click.

I don't see doing things in a different Linux OS any different than learning a new Windows OS.One of the reasons our new netbook with Windows 7 on it sat around unused until Debian 7 came out, was because nobody knew how to use Windows 7. We spent hours trying to do simple things on it to no avail.Debian 6 did not have the proper WiFi driver, and I could never find one. Debian 7 the WiFi worked fine out of the box. So does Mint 17 and Ubuntu 14, so the driver is out there somewhere, and included in the new distro's.

Like my printers all worked perfectly in Debian 6, but when I upgraded to Debian 7, all I got from the printer was garbage. I was not alone on this problem. Debian 7 still prints garbage most of the time, even with newer drivers from the printer maker themselves. I tested my printer in both Ubuntu and Mint using both the old and new drivers and did not have a single problem.

To try to get my office set back up like the old days, where I didn't have to worry about where I put my files, I need to learn how to build a file server again. Something I really don't have time or the schmartz to do anymore. Using external hard drives is OK, but doing things going through the LAN to a computer elsewhere, then to the drive connected to it, does create some problems of its own. Especially if you copy the shared folder from the external to each of your desktops. All your data is in one basket until you backup the external.

Normally, I use one computer and keep a copy of the folder from the main external hard drive on the desktop. This way I have a copy on my desk, and a copy on the remote external. So if one dies before I run backup, I have not lost anything. But if I forget I was working in a folder on the desktop and did not copy it back to the main drive, and work on the same folder from another computer, whichever one I save to the main drive, I lost all the data from the other folder. To break myself of that habit, after I upload my desktop folder, I delete it, so I don't accidentally write in it again without downloading a new copy.

Back when I was running a file server, everything stayed in sync. Trouble is, I do not recall how I set it up.I probably used SSH because Rsync could copy from external drives in my office to external drives down at the house, which were all a part of the file server system.The only thing is, I did not use my computers as work stations. Meaning I had the actual Programs on each computer, and ran them on the computer and not from the file server. So basically, my file server was simply a data storage file server, not much unlike a NAS I guess.

Currently, I physically walk down to my house, take the external hard drive off a shelf, carry it up to the garage office and connect it to the same computer I have my daily use external hard drive connected to. Then run Rsync to copy the main external drive to the mirrored external drive. Then carry it back down to the house and stick it back on the shelf again. I'm no longer sending a backup of the drive to St. Louis, as my brother is now working from a single laptop computer. While winding his business down so he can retire.

Not sure if I want to trust on-line clouds like DropBox for my data I want to keep secure.

FWIW: I have my external drives set to not delete anything, but it does overwrite files with the same name. In other words, if I clean up some files and put them in folders, then copy the drive to the mirror, the mirror is still in the same mess as it has both the cleaned up folders and all the junk I moved into the new folders.I'm working on correcting this, as I have dozens of identical copies saved from when computers were acting up, or I replaced computers and saved the contents of their hard drives. Talk about redundancy and not know which is which anymore, hi hi...

It's intuitively obvious to me that you could benefit from clustering two servers and mirroring them in real time. To your work stations this cluster (it can be more than two if you are really paranoid) would in effect look like a single file system on a hard drive. The major advantage being that the drive would be backed up in real time.

I did something like that back in the days when Windows NT was the latest technology and I took it upon myself to Google how it could be accomplished in Linux. The theory is simple but requires a familiarity with things like crons, rsync, drdb, heartbeat, and a healthy understanding of how servers work. I don't think it's beyond you to learn about all these things, but there definitely would be a learning curve. Once the system is installed and tested, you would never have to manually backup your data. It would be done for you as the changes are made. Your High Availability Servers would of course be run off line conditioners and UPS's.

I would appreciate any information you have regarding Linux kernels that reference previously installed video drivers. I'm using Linux 3.13.0-37 and no such thing is happening with my Nvidia drivers. To be fair I'll say that Nvidia is the only driver that must be recompiled and they say it's a Linux problem. So go figure.

In Ubuntu there is no sudo group to which you must add yourself each time. Simply set up a user account to be administrator and issue the sudo command from a terminal to attain root privileges. I can't speak for other Linux distributions but I don't recall having a need to join a group in openSUSE or in debian 6 (might have been debian 7).

My old file server that fried was fairly simple. Probably more like file sharing than an actual server.We added a code to I think GRUB, so when the computer booted up, it also Mounted the file server and placed an Icon on the desktop. It HAD to be there, because any program I used was directed to save the data in a folder on the file server.

On the file server computer itself, I had CRON run Rsync hourly to save the onboard changed data to an external hard drive. Then at 3am CRON would run Rsync to save the external hard drive in the garage to one down in the house. When that finished, it would save to St. Louis. I just don't remember how I saved the data using Rsync from up here to down at the house, unless it was via SSH or something, I have long since forgotten.

But the biggest problem with live backups or live mirrors, is if you accidentally delete a file, or if a file becomes corrupted, it destroys all copies on all backups too. Unless you do a manual monthly backup to protect some of the data.The way I use Rsync now, it is told NOT to delete anything. However, if a file gets corrupted, or any file with the same file name, it overwrites the existing file. Else your hard drives would fill up real fast.

I really am illiterate on how computers work. I figure something out, usually by searching on-line, and once I have it working, I forget about it. It may be a year or two before I have to set up another computer, and by then, half of what I learned has changed anyhow. So I no longer try to remember anything anymore. Like I complained about earlier, copying a simple Root file I had down pat in Debian, and knew how to get it working. Had to learn a whole new way, and use different programs in Linux Mint to do the same thing. Why Gnome Nautilus did not work as expected after I installed it, I never did find out. Also, things that just work in gedit, do not work right in pluma. Have not figured out why yet on that either.Heck, I don't remember the things I did to get something working yesterday. Once I found the fix and it started working, as I moved on to other things, I forgot what I did, hi hi... Sign of old age I guess.

Here is one for you: I've been running Google Chrome 36.0.1985.143, even though it has had several updates since then. I updated it to the next version and Flash was broken on all of my machines. Trying to wipe Google Chrome is almost impossible. It was faster for me to save the /home directory, reinstall the OS, and stick /home back where it belonged. Which causes a few problems due to other folders like /usr, etc. I have one old machine I used for accounting, where I tried each new version of Chrome, and finally today, we got another new Chrome upgrade, and it worked on the old computer, so I let the upgrade go through on my next oldest computer and it worked there too. Have not installed the upgrade on this or my newest machine yet, because of the hassles of rolling back if it still has problems.

Now that I've used Linux Mint as my main OS for a few days, today I will be moving over to Ubuntu 14.04 after lunch and for the rest of the day. I'm back on Debian 7 right now, because I was stealing some executables from Debian to use on Linux Mint, which are not in their repository.I know you are not supposed to do that, due to compatibility issues, BUT, I just don't like the version chosen by Mint. There are some issues using a non-compatible version, more like quirks you can get used to, to have the version you like. A simple example is click n drag. The Debian version on Debian lets you see what you clicked as you move it. Like a card in a card game when you move it from one pile to another. The Mint version on Mint works like that too. BUT, if you use the version from Debian on Mint, when you move the card or document, it disappears until you release it. No biggie since the pointer still shows where your mouse is located.

Speaking of mouse pointers, one of the reasons I've moved to Mint on my newest computer is the mouse pointer disappears when placed over live buttons or an image, and in Gimp too. This does not happen in Linux Mint on any program. It is the exact same mouse driver used on both. Issues like these are well over my head, and it seems a fix never comes down the pike.It is confusing to someone like me, because Debian is the base Ubuntu and Mint are built on top of. So if it does not work on Debian, how the heck does it work on Mint? Drivers are part of the base system, aka Debian. As I said, over my head...

In essence a cluster of computers mirroring each other would be treated as a single hard drive as far as the users are concerned. That clustered "hard drive" must be backed up as you would any other hard drive with live data on it. If I were running a business I'd be doing backups every day. The point of going with the High Availability mirrors is to keep you live 24/7 and help you recover from hardware failures. All your other data retention policies would be the same as they are now, but hopefully less manually intensive. And, by the way, I'm pretty sure the heartbeat software talked about in the article will prevent corrupt files from being duplicated. Accidental deletions are a matter of how you handle your recycle bin.

Us old guys have a tendency to forget things. With that in mind I frequently document a procedure that took me a while to figure out so that I don't have to reverse engineer a solution again in the future. Of course I must make time to compose the documentation and assure I do not forget where I put it. I have such things stored digitally and also printed out as hard copies kept in binders.

You certainly have a customized scheme over there. Some of the things you are doing require an in depth understanding of the OS and the hardware which has to be modified to do what you want it to do. Mix and match is fine if you are making your own Linux distribution. But it's very tricky when you are trying to merge other people's work. You need to know what they had in mind. Good luck with that.

I've been checking on how the separate driver file works and have not found anything yet. I only ran across it while researching something else, and now can't find diddly. I'm didn't ignore your question, just can't seem to find the answer again.

I don't know if your system shows what computer I'm on, I'm on the used Dell Optiplex 745, running Ubuntu 14.04 fallback, using the latest Google Chrome. They finally fixed the flash player problem, so I moved on up.

I talked about this a couple of years ago. What Linux CLAIMS, and what is FACT, is like apples and chunks of mulch. A Mounted Volume is NOT the same as being a Drive IN the computer you are working on. The same holds true for Shared Folders.

I can LINK four hard drives in the same computer together and make them look like one big hard drive. I can also LINK partitions on a single hard drive together to make them look like a bigger partition. But you are looking a big birds nest if something goes wrong by doing same.

If a Mounted Shared Folder, or Mounted Drive was the same as it being in your computer, then a program like Rsync should be able to write to them. But Rsync cannot even see them, much less write to them.Which is why I manually carry my mirror from the house to the garage to make the backup. Besides, it's several hours faster to use USB than LAN, especially using Upload vs Download.

SSH is supposed to be how you overcome the limitation of Rsync. I can get this to work on Debian 6 and 7, but cannot on Ubuntu or Linux Mint. In fact, I'm having a devil of a time, just keeping a Mounted Drive LIVE on both Ubuntu and Mint. It's like the LAN goes to sleep and doesn't wake up without poking it with a stick several times. I get all kinds of error messages, from Unreachable to you name it. But if I persist and keep trying, it eventually works, but only for a few minutes.

Here is an example. I'm working from a folder on the external drive down at the house. I mount the drive so it appears on my desktop. Click on the drive and open the folder, and document I want to work on. If I don't save that document every five minutes, when I do go to save it, it cannot find the folder or drive from which it came. So to keep from losing my work, I save it to my desktop, then go and keep clicking on the Mounted Drive to get it to open again. Once open, then I can save to it directly from the program that was supposed to save it to in the first place. This only happens on Mint and Ubuntu, not on Debian. The Drive itself never sleeps, and has no spin down mode. So it's not like my NAS where after a half hour, I had to wait for the platters to spin back up again before the document would save.

For this reason, after mounting the drive, in order to use Ubuntu or Mint, I first Copy the Folder I'm working on to my Desktop, then open the document from my desktop copied folder. When I'm done, I have to save the document back to the Mounted Drives proper folder, overwriting the original document.I've looked on-line until I'm blue in the face, and I do find others experiencing the same problem, but no solutions other than use Debian instead of Ubuntu or Mint. There are not enough of us this is affecting for them to give it any type of priority. I doubt it has anything to do with the brand of computer or motherboards because I'm using Asus F2 A Class, AMD; Dell with Intel, Asus M, AMD, and Compaq whatever, and each one has the same problems, if I'm in Mint or Ubuntu, but not if I'm using Debian. This does tell me it must be a setting somewhere, but where?And to be fair, I do have some minor problems on Debian that I do not have on either Ubuntu or Mint. Now that I'm back to having four computers, I'll move my oldest back over to my accounting desk, and use the other three computers for things on each that show no glitches. The Dell has horrible snow in YouTube videos, using any OS or browser. But works the best for my writing work.

A program that works perfectly on one computer, may work differently on another computer with the same OS. Different Distro's use different versions of the same program, so if you mix and match, you can expect something not to work right when not used on the native Distro. BUT, if you like a certain version from a Distro you don't use, and move it to a Distro you prefer, you just have to put up with the little quirks, since it otherwise works the way you want it to, but with a small caveat, usually just a minor annoyance one can get used to. I'm also learning, sometimes it has nothing to do with the Distro, but with the CPU being used. Some CPUs don't have onboard graphics built in, even though the parts are on the motherboard for it. So CPUs that do use the onboard graphics, may use them in a different way.Like FreeCell for example. I prefer the version used on Debian, not the one in Linux Mint. BUT, using the SOL program from Debian in Mint, on the new computer, means the cards you are moving are invisible while they are being moved. Doesn't affect the game, but just weird when you are used to them being visible.This does not happen moving SOL to Mint on the Dell machine. So I think it must be CPU related?

" A Mounted Volume is NOT the same as being a Drive IN the computer you are working on. The same holds true for Shared Folders."I don't think any distro of Linux claims that all three of those things are the same. It's true that all your storage media has to be mounted in order to transfer data, but the way mounting and data transfer is accomplished is different in all three cases.

You being there, and me being here, makes it difficult to know what is really transpiring in your network of computers, but it smells like driver issues. Drivers for each flavor and version of Linux are different which results in mass confusion to the end user. What works in Mint is not designed to work in Debian, for example, because there are no standards across the Linux spectrum. It's all custom software, free and open source notwithstanding. Thus total compatibility on all platforms is virtually guaranteed not to be possible. Even when you use the same operating system on all your hardware, you may or may not have identical drivers. There are updates, but the differences in hardware also matters. A driver for a 32-bit processor would not do in a 64-bit box. It's not just a matter of doubling the data bus width. The instruction sets inside the different processors are totally different which is one reason you can never have a single driver that works the same across all platforms. There are variations in operating systems, software drivers, and hardware that all contribute the the variables you need to consider when configuring a network.

Again it's hard for me to imagine what your network is doing, but your "sleepy' hard drives seem to be saying the power management on both ends is not in sync. I'm certain there are config files and profiles that establish the policies for shutting down the hardware. Unfortunately I am not sure where they are located and even less sure what parameters are needed to make the changes. However, if you determine it is a power management issue, then simple Google research should reveal how to set it all up for a given operating system.

One word of caution about Ubuntu might help you decide what to do. The current state of Ubuntu is about to change dramatically. I've read where an entirely new front end is due (even seen pictures of it) for release in 2016 some time and that not a lot of development effort is going into the current LTS for that reason. What you see in Ubuntu today will go away entirely and be replaced by a desktop that is no longer a desktop. It will look a lot more like Windows 8 does today. So whatever you do to make Ubuntu work will be for naught unless you decide to stay at the level it is on today. They are serious about taking over the mobile device market over in Ubuntu-land. The good news is that MATE is going off on it's own in about a week. If you love Gnome2, your salvation might be in MATE.

I've played games on Linux but never was Solitaire one of them. However, I have extensive exposure to SOL on Windows. LOL It's been a long while since I touched those games offered by Microsoft, but there is a vague memory in the back of my old brain that suggest those disappearing cards of yours are a setting within the game itself. Windows also has settings for it's file Explorer, and I'd not doubt that one of them will make the object visible or invisible while moving. It sounds so familiar but yet I can't put a finger on where I've seen or worked with it. Anyway, if Windows has that kind of control, Linux must be able to do it six different ways.

And, from what I understand, the CPU's in today's computers no longer generate any of the graphics. It's all done on a GPU elsewhere on the motherboard. The CPU takes the processed video and sends it off to where it has to go, but that's about all it does. Look to your OS settings for your display and/or video to have something for making invisible cards appear again.

I've looked into the invisible cards issue. It is simply a matter of which version is used with which Distro. It is not an adjustment a user can make, it is in the program code itself.

I won't have to worry about Ubuntu much longer. Although I'm on it right now, I hit a serious snag yesterday that took me two hours of web searches before I found the answer.

Don't know if you use KVM switches or not, but to change from one computer to another, most of them use Scroll Lock tapped twice, then the number of the computer you want to access.

I've been using Ubuntu for a little over a week now with only the little quirks one finds using a new system. Then something happened. I could not change between computers using the Scroll Lock button.Messed around with it for way too long, rebooted the KVM switch, even unplugged everything from it, rebooted, unplugged again and hooked everything back up. Still did not work.I always keep a new keyboard on hand, so opened it up and gave it a try. Nope, not the keyboard.So I started checking on-line. I did check the keyboard remapping areas before doing anything else. Nothing was changed anywhere.I can manually change this KVM switch, so wasn't completely stuck. Checked the keyboard maps on the other computers, nothing changed. I didn't think much about it before I did tons of web searches, but Ubuntu had an upgrade which required a reboot. Needless to say, you are on the computer you are doing this with when you reboot. Performing the reboot gave Ubuntu control of the KVM switch somehow. It took a little more searching on-line to find out what key combination Ubuntu uses for KVM switches. I finally found it, although it does not appear in the keyboard mapping controls, Ubuntu changes the Scroll Lock key to the Caps Lock key to change KVM switches using Scroll Lock.Scroll Lock is not used on hardly any computers anymore, so doing this seemed illogical to me. However, I found an blog post by some computer geek as the reason they did this. It was to appease those using laptops, netbooks and cell phones, which do not have a Scroll Lock key on them.Ubuntu does not provide a user a way to remap this function back to the Scroll Lock where it belongs. Remapping the Caps Lock key to the Scroll Lock key means you have to press the Scroll Lock key to perform the Caps Lock function.

How I solved the problem was by shutting down all the computers, booting back into Debian on all of them, made sure my Scroll Lock was working once again, it was. Then did a soft reboot into Ubuntu, then rebooted Mint on my new computer, came back to Ubuntu to log-in. At least I have my Scroll Lock back to switch the KVM. To me, this is Ubuntu taking control away from me with no way to undue the damage they caused. I can't remember all the steps to keep them from doing it each time I have to reboot. So they will be history fairly soon anyhow, again. They should have improved on version 8.04 instead of downgrading and downgrading again each new release. Or NOT try to make one OS that works on desktops and cell phones at the same time. They are two totally different devices. After all, I don't expect my washing machine to keep my frozen foods cold. I have a Freezer for cold foods and a Washing machine for washing clothes in. I don't want the machine to do both functions. But that is the direction too many Distro's are going. Trying to make them do something they are not supposed to be doing.

I know, not your fault. I'm not meaning to take it out on you. I just get angry when some egotistical company tries to control stuff they have no business controlling or changing.

I'm still checking into the LAN delays. Seems like it is a Distro problem also. I've never had delays when using Debian. It only started with the new computer after I started using Ubuntu and Mint. Although I'm getting to like the many features of Mint. I can't spare the wasted time it is costing me.